As COVID-19 forces many of us to learn how to work remotely, one highly respected classical guitar duo’s experience at intense, technology-based collaboration while separated by almost 4,000 miles offers an inspiration to musicians living in enforced isolation everywhere.

Next month, on May 8, Naxos Records will release Duo Tandem’s latest, much-anticipated album, “Guitar Duos of Kemal Belevi” featuring the compositions of this popular Turkish Cypriot composer whose lyrical oeuvre has gained a wide following among aficionados.

Featuring London-based, Necati Emirzade and Chicago-based Mark Anderson, Duo Tandem’s catalogue of recordings to date have been made possible by the shrewd leveraging of technologies such as Whatsapp, Google apps, and Skype. This, the third album release by the two musicians, follows their 2018 CD: “Watching the World Go By,” which Classical Guitar magazine chose as one of its top-10 albums of 2018.

Working together in person only to record and to perform, Emirzade and Anderson provide an inspiration and encouragement, demonstrating to so many musicians now constrained by current circumstances, that it is possible to create great things through technology-enabled collaboration.